[Finance] How best to boycott USA goods.

[happypig]

Just cancelled my Amazon Prime membership. Gave the reason as "Donald Trump"

 

[Badger]

Just cancelled my Amazon Prime membership. Gave the reason as "Donald Trump"

Dammit, I didn't see a box to enter a reason!

 

[chickens]

We can’t cut out, but we can absolutely minimise exposure within our control. I won’t be taking a sledgehammer to anything, but I will absolutely be cutting ongoing subscriptions to US based services.

I’ll additionally be looking at how to remove as much of my software stack from US companies as possible. Sync.com is Canada based alternative to Dropbox/Google Drive, LibreOffice or FreeOffice can stand in for my Office365 subscription, I can drop my Apple One subscription.

If you’re tech savvy and angry enough there are Linux distributions that are managed from within Europe and that can replace Mac/Windows operating systems, though they will all require a certain degree of blood sweat and tears to get working. (I suspect I will be the only one going this far, but I am angry enough)

I have to suck up a certain amount of US influence, but I’m going to minimize it as much as I can.

 

[AmexRuislip]

I’ll be cancelling my Microsoft 365 subscription and explaining to them exactly why on the form.

Already done that before the later debacle.
Too much of a price hike for me!

 

[GT49er]

It's become everyone's new favourite pastime in Canada.

I've cancelled a few services in recent weeks - Netflix, MS 365 and XBox subscriptions, a couple of others. Annoyingly, my annual Prime subscription renewed before I got chance to cancel.

Avoid Starbucks, McDonalds, BK etc.
Don't buy stuff from Amazon.

Good thinking - yep, I'll go with that for starters.

 

[jcdenton08]

It’s practically impossible, because if you drill down far enough, forgive the pun, billions of things have American components or were manufactured using American components, or were sourced from ingredients produced by American-owned companies, and so on.

The phone you’re typing on, the software that runs the browser/OS, the servers that host the websites. This site used Xenforo software, for example, who are a British company with an American parent company.

It’s really not that easy, because their economy is so massive you’re basically supporting it no matter what. Them and China.

 

[The Rattler]

I’m going to stop watching Frasier

 

[chickens]

It’s practically impossible, because if you drill down far enough, forgive the pun, billions of things have American components or were manufactured using American components, or were sourced from ingredients produced by American-owned companies, and so on.

The phone you’re typing on, the software that runs the browser/OS, the servers that host the websites. This site used Xenforo software, for example, who are a British company with an American parent company.

It’s really not that easy, because their economy is so massive you’re basically supporting it no matter what. Them and China.

100% - all we can do is minimize our exposure as far as we can, and seek out viable alternatives where they exist.

Apple and Microsoft won’t see their share price dive as a result of me cancelling a couple of subscriptions, but it’s the only gesture I can make.

 

[jackanada]

And everyone wear Albion shirts from the pre-Nike era.

I haven't bought a shirt in the Nike era.
I did get given the first Nike shirt as a present, but my sandtex one that's now so tight I can't breathe in it gets more outings.

 

[WATFORD zero]

Take a chair to the beach and command the tide to stop

Or, if you don't like the reasons behind people's various efforts to minimise it, you could always pretend it's impossible to reduce it

 

[jcdenton08]

100% - all we can do is minimize our exposure as far as we can, and seek out viable alternatives where they exist.

Apple and Microsoft won’t see their share price dive as a result of me cancelling a couple of subscriptions, but it’s the only gesture I can make.

Absolutely, and it’s a moral, personal decision rather than one that will have any real world impact. Fair play. I’m just pointing out it’s futile if people are honestly thinking it will make any sort of difference

 

[dazzer6666]

One of my main memories of visiting Cuba was the total lack of any American products (and blissfully, American people).

This……lots of nice Canadians, also avoiding the Yanks.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

My plan to avoid going the US completely this year was completely scuppered by Air France. I was supposed to be taking a direct flight from Paris to Toronto on Monday, but there was some issue with the plane and they decided I was one of the people to get booted off the replacement flight in a smaller plane. So, they put my on a later replacement flight connecting in Detroit. To say I was fuming, would be an understatement. It took me 26 hours to get from Malta to Toronto and I had to enter the US.

Air France can go f*** themselves.

But at least you flew with an airline group that respected your pronouns.

 

[nickjhs]

I’ll be cancelling my Microsoft 365 subscription and explaining to them exactly why on the form.

I haven't used any MS Office products for many years. Quite happy with Libre Office

 

[SouthSaxon]

I haven't used any MS Office products for many years. Quite happy with Libre Office

Yeah, that’s what I’ll switch to.

 

[Sea Cider]

I was with you brothers and sisters, right up to the last point.

It's really not that hard to stop using amazon! It's chock full of shite products anyway, and often more expensive than other places

 

[nickjhs]

It doesn't matter how hard it is, or how little impact it feels like we're having, you can guarantee that American firms will be carefully looking at their sales, particularly non-US sales, and it is near-certain that they will be trending down. They will start to lay on political pressure to the US

TBH I see it as utterly pointless.

 

[Whoislloydy]

It's really not that hard to stop using amazon! It's chock full of shite products anyway, and often more expensive than other places

I don't even check on Amazon anymore, i act like it doesn't exist and shop for it locally. Or ask myself, "do i even need this".

 

[chickens]

Here's an idea (as the OP asked for ideas) - I've mentioned this book before in other threads - read this book to understand the scale of the challenge that anyone who seeks to boycott faces. You might need to buy it other than from Amazon. If you haven't read it, pre prepared to be depressed.

View attachment 197491

I have read it, and absolutely we’re stitched up like a kipper, I second it as well worth reading.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Agree it will be hard to eradicate U.S. companies but it is worthwhile everyone being conscious about all purchases and buying from non-U.S. companies when you can. Any impact is better than no impact and the more who do this the better.

It’s Rola Cola for me from now on.

Seriously though, I’ve already scrapped my U.S. Holiday that I would have been having later this year and I have a long track record of boycotting companies which deliver poor service, so I reckon I can apply the same mindset to boycotting ‘The land of the selfish and the home of the morally bankrupt’.

Indeed.

You can be a vegetarian without being required to patrol the country lanes at night to save animals from becoming road kill, or snatching worms out of the beaks of sparrows, and forcing your cat to eat Weetabix (with Oat 'milk').